Monday, May 26, 2014

To the Bat Cave, Sharon!

We spent Sunday at Carlsbad Caverns, and no, the bat caves
are not open to the public, but I just had to do that.

The day got off to a bit of a rocky start, literally, as
flash flooding on Saturday night (it was a spectacular storm) wiped out some of
the roadway up to the caverns and damaged lighting in the caverns. It was not
until after 10:30 that we were able to go down.

We took the self-guided tour through The Big Room, which is
described as essential for any visitor. This was Sharon’s third visit and my
second but one could go through dozens of times and see everything anew. It
took us about twice as long as it should have since I took about 170 images, a
few of which are worth looking at. For those interested in such things the vast
majority of these images were taken at about f5.4-5.6 @1/40 to 1/60 and at ISOs
ranging from 1,000 to 25,600. The GX7 was a real champ! I processed minimally.
I do wish I had a wider angle lens, the kit lens with the camera is a 14-42mm (28-94
in 35 mm terms) which was all I used today. In addition to my telephoto zoom my
next lens probably will be a fixed focal length lens in the range of 7-10
(14-20) mm and a bit faster than the zooms.

Back on the surface, we were taken with the landscape and the desert in bloom (below)

We emerged around 1:30 got a bit of lunch in Carlsbad, and
then drove 170 miles on to Alamogordo. The route, took us north on 285 to 82
over the Sacramento mountains and through the Cloudcroft ski resort. Had we not
felt pushed for time I could have taken another couple dozen images, but I had
tried Sharon’s patience twice, with images in the cavern and speed on the roads.